Sometimes when I run an old 16-bit Dos progam (usually a classic dosgame ;-) I get the following message in the Boinc manager and the active workunit is restarting and all the work done at that workunit is undone. A serious waste of cpu-time. Is there an option to 'pause' boinc if such an older progam is started?

12/8/2008 10:29:48 PM|SETI@home|Task 30oc08af.12538.5798.15.8.124_0 exited with zero status but no 'finished' file
12/8/2008 10:29:48 PM|SETI@home|If this happens repeatedly you may need to reset the project.
12/8/2008 10:29:48 PM|SETI@home|Task 21oc08ad.2723.72.3.8.114_0 exited with zero status but no 'finished' file
12/8/2008 10:29:48 PM|SETI@home|If this happens repeatedly you may need to reset the project.
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I get that message from time to time, usually when the system clock has to be adjusted by more than 30 seconds by the time server (some games seem to cause that :-), but I have never lost any work by that; at least not more than a few minutes since the last check point.

If you are asking for an automatic detection of such programs by BOINC, I'm quite sure that there is no such option, but if you have the BOINC manager running, you can right click the icon in the status line and select "Snooze". If you use to play longer than for an hour, the other suspend options are better, though.

I get these messages from time to time on my FreeBSD box, usually when the cpu is drowned in work (load > number of cores). The excessive load causes the BOINC manager to not pick up the "I'm alive" signal from the science processes, and consequently thinks they have terminated, so it restarts them. The excessive load can also cause the science processes to be asleep for more than 30 seconds, in which case they don't send the "I'm alive signal", but are still running.
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Task 16ja09aa.27910.26136.6.8.191_0 exited with zero status but no 'finished' file
If this happens repeatedly you may need to reset the project.
Restarting task 16ja09aa.27910.26136.6.8.191_0 using setiathome_enhanced version 608

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"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'" -- Isaac Asimov